When Ballsitic Publishing began searching for Advisory Board members for EXPOSÉ 1 , one of the digital illustrators who had made a mark in the community was Robert "Lunatique" Chang. Currently living in Fuzhou, China, working on his animated short film "Promise", Rob plays a distinct role in the community on CGTalk and other digital illustration forums, constantly giving critique and posting his own work in progress for peer review. Leonard Teo took a brief moment with Rob to chat about his artwork.
I was born in Taiwan, and immigrated to the U.S. when I was 11. I grew up with Japanese animation/manga, sci-fi/fantasy books & illustrations, comics, films..etc, but I also have a passion for music, fashion, literature, photography ..etc.
My professional path started in art with comics/freelance illustration at age 18 (1991), and continued into the video game industry in 1998, and that's when I first got into digital art. I was doing textures and concept art for various games, then moved onto art directing. I left the game industry in 2001 for a sabbatical to work on my own projects.

Throughout my creative career, I never was satisfied doing just art, I also did music, writing, film, photography, fashion design..etc on the side. Now I'm in the middle of production on my personal project -a 3D animated short film titled "Promise." It's a modern fairytale about love, faith, and sacrifice. I'm the creator/writer/director/artist on this project, and there are some volunteers helping me out on it. The estimated completion time is around the middle of 2005 -- but don't hold me to it. (crosses fingers.)

I have a fairly wide range of influences, but when people comment on my work, they generally use words like "dreamy", "soft", "romantic", "beautiful" and "ethereal". I have a tendency to idealize the subject of my artwork, being a fan of ethereal beauty.
I'm especially fascinated by feminine beauty - the kind that is expressed by pensiveness, melancholy, or sentimentalism. I guess if I were born in the 19th century, I would've been either a Pre-Raphaelite or a Neo-Classist.

Tutorial
I've been trying to paint something digitally that looks indistinguishable from traditional oil painting for a while now, and I think I've finally done it with this piece. I love Painter 7. I used only the palette knife for this entire painting.
I was originally trying for that ala prima look again, and someone had suggested that I use a tool that's incapable of producing fine detail, that way I won't render it to death. Well, looks like I still rendered it to death, but with nice results this time.
The reference for this painting was a magazine clipping I liked. The model had different face, a much slimmer figure, and a lot less curves. I like 'em a bit more voluptuous, so I gave her some "padding."
Anything and everything. Could be a piece of music, a particular way I feel at a given moment, a person on the street, a TV commercial, a passage in a novel ..etc.
For artwork, I'm a fan of a wide range of artists from 19th century painters, to Boston School painters of the 1930's, to illustrators of the 1950's, to anime/manga, comics, sci-fantasy illustrators, 3D artists and more. I could name my favorites, but it'll take half a page. You can find all this useless stuff about me on my website anyway.

Image Credits :

Snow (Middle Left): " This one was done in Photoshop 6. It's the last piece I used only Photoshop on. After this piece, I started to use Painter in combination with Photoshop.
I've been working on this piece on and off for about two years. It started as a ball-point pen sketch, then I started to work on it as an oil painting, which I never finished.
Since I never finished the oil painting, I started doing an experiement with it in Painter 6 to see if I could make if look like a traditonal painting. Then, recently, I went ahead and finished the rest of it in Photoshop 6."

Mood 1 (Middle & Middle Right)

Black Wolf Ronin (Bottom):
I don't usually get all giddy about having a macho guy as the subject of a painting, but for some reason, I sketched this badass ronin dude, and decided to paint him. I used Painter and Photoshop. I wish I had a model or reference for this painting, but I couldn't find anything useful, and I certainly am not that muscular! Doing everytihng out of your head can be painful because you're never sure if you're painting things correctly.